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EU VAT Validation for HR and Payroll Platforms

HR and payroll platforms that invoice EU clients for employer-of-record or contractor services must verify client VAT numbers before applying cross-border zero-rate treatment. Use the TaxID API to validate EU VAT numbers at client onboarding and on recurring invoices.

Implementation steps

1. 1

   Validate at client onboarding

   When a client business signs up, collect their EU VAT number and call GET /api/v1/validate/:country/:vat from your server. Display the returned company_name and company_address to confirm the client's identity before activating their account.

2. 2

   Apply reverse-charge on cross-border invoices

   For clients in a different EU member state with a validated 'active' VAT number, generate invoices with zero VAT and the annotation 'VAT: Reverse charge'. This is required by EU Invoice Directive 2006/112/EC Article 226 for intra-community B2B supplies.

3. 3

   Re-validate clients monthly before invoice generation

   Before each monthly billing cycle, run a batch re-validation of all reverse-charge clients using the TaxID batch endpoint. Flag any clients whose VAT number has become 'invalid' for your finance team to review before generating invoices.

4. 4

   Attach validation records to each invoice

   Store the TaxID request_id, validated company_name, company_address, and validation timestamp with each invoice. This audit trail is your proof of due diligence if a tax authority questions a zero-rated invoice during a VAT inspection.

Code example

const res = await fetch(
  'http://localhost:3000/api/v1/validate/DE/DE123456789',
  { headers: { 'Authorization': 'Bearer YOUR_API_KEY' } }
);
const { valid, status, company_name, company_address } = await res.json();

if (valid) {
  console.log(`Valid EU business: ${company_name}`);
} else if (status === 'service_unavailable') {
  // VIES is temporarily down — retry or allow with manual check
  console.log('VIES unavailable — check back in a few minutes');
} else {
  console.log('Invalid VAT number — charge local tax rate');
}

import requests

res = requests.get(
    "http://localhost:3000/api/v1/validate/DE/DE123456789",
    headers={"Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"}
)
data = res.json()

if data["valid"]:
    print(f"Valid: {data['company_name']}")
elif data["status"] == "service_unavailable":
    print("VIES temporarily unavailable")
else:
    print("Invalid VAT number")

API response

The TaxID API returns a consistent JSON response for every validation request:

{
  "valid": true,
  "status": "active",
  "country_code": "DE",
  "vat_number": "123456789",
  "company_name": "Example GmbH",
  "company_address": "Musterstraße 1, 10115 Berlin",
  "request_date": "2026-05-10T00:00:00.000Z",
  "cached": false,
  "request_id": "req_01j..."
}

Error handling

The API uses a consistent Stripe-style error format. Always handle service_unavailable separately — VIES has occasional downtime and you should not reject valid customers during outages.

Evaluating EU VAT APIs? Compare TaxID vs Vatstack, Vatlayer, Avalara →

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